I was up at 6:30 and had a quiet hour or so with the overnight news and social media. Once we were both up and about and breakfast was finished, I returned to my study to complete the analysis of all of the photos in the photo library. Because of the sheer scale of this, I broke the task into 17 separate chunks, each handling a range of years. It took an hour or so, but eventually the whole library was processed, and I had a series of summary files holding the details. With that done, I shut down the iMac for the day.
Tomorrow is Zoe's birthday, so today we had invited her and Ellie, and Kim and Jon to lunch. As Ellie had her friend Poppy staying, Poppy came along as well. We had a pseudo-BBQ planned. We no longer have a BBQ as such, but we had bought the usual suspects (burgers, sausages and chicken drumsticks) and I was going to prepare them in the oven. I started by drying off the chicken drumsticks and tossing them in a bit of baking powder, then mixed them with a tablespoon of vegetable oil, and dusted them with paprika and garlic powder. Forty minutes in a 200C oven did the job nicely. With the chicken done, I then set about the rest of the meat (and also prepared a sirloin steak for Di, who doesn't like BBQ).
The family all arrived, and we chatted over a glass of Prosecco while setting out the table. The whole event was very casual (as befits a BBQ). Some sat inside, and several of us sat on the patio. We all drifted in and out of the next couple of hours. Kim had made a lemon drizzle cake, which was decorated with candles and brought out for the birthday girl. As it happened, the wind blew the candles out before Zoe got to them - but the thought was there. We even sang "Happy Birthday".
Everyone left soon after 16:00, and after a bit of tidying up, we settled for some Kindle-time while the dishwasher did the bulk of the work.
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